ABSTRACT
This chapter reads Wim Wenders’ film Perfect Days as a meditation on the importance of caring for public infrastructure and as a rich illustration of what the author calls an “aesthetics of ordinary maintenance.” Through its portrayal of Hirayama—a Tokyo public toilet cleaner—the film challenges the common view of cleaning and maintenance work as dull and politically insignificant. Drawing on feminist care ethics, maintenance/repair studies, and Jacques Rancière’s political theory, the author argues that the film’s aesthetics—and especially its slow tempo, its repetitiveness, and its attention to “the invisible”—serves as a pedagogical exercise in the cultivation of viewers’ attention and as a way to transform their perception of the world. The chapter also proposes that the film’s documentary-style slow aesthetics constitutes an interruption of neoliberal temporality and foregrounds the skills and knowledge of maintenance workers. In the conclusion, the author draws on Bonnie Honig’s work to indicate the significance and urgency of better attending to the maintenance and repair of public things. The author argues that shared infrastructures matter for community-building, for justice—the neglect of public things affects social groups quite unevenly—and for recognizing the dignity of workers whose labour makes urban life possible.
